CHOOSING THE RIGHT POINT OF VIEW

The writer uses Point of View as a photographer uses focus – for perspective, distance, and shades of clarity. As a writer, you can focus close in, telling the story from an individual POV, or you can pull way back to a godlike panorama. You have many choices. Even within one POV (whether first or third), you can move from an interior perspective to a middle distance and back. You can shift perspectives among two or more characters. Or you can speak with authoritative omniscience, going into all the characters’ perspectives at once. While a short story will typically use only one POV, a longer work could combine them. In this presentation, we’ll use examples from works of fiction to examine a variety of points of view, why the writer chose a specific POV, and how that works to his or her advantage.